How To Improve Your Work-Life Balance with Shared Office Space

In the era of startups, small business and entrepreneurship, never has working for oneself been more desirable. The problem is that since most startups have online facets and new small businesses are starting up at home, it’s becoming difficult for entrepreneurs to detach from their work life.

Many startups crash and burn when founders and employees alike realize that they’re constantly engaged with their work and collapse under the stress of it all. A 2016 study by Fidelity Investments found that millennials would rather take an averagepay cut of $7,600 and pass up promotions if it meant they could partake in meaningful work and maintain a work-life balance.

So, the question with a thousand answers now is how do today’s employees, entrepreneurs and small business owners maintain that elusive work-life balance? This article will discuss how coworking and shared office space can create it. Benefits include:

Community

Say you lock the door on your private home office and are now guaranteed solitude. To each their own, but being a social species, you’ll come to find what many people working from home start to notice. It’s boring. The sound of your own breathing and keyboard tapping or the playlist you’re listening to – it gets old.

Shared office spaces contain like-minded individuals with similar goals in their own fields. It provides the opportunity to get your own work done in your private office or on your own desk, while still networking and building your friend circle/client base.

Separation of Home & State (of mind)

The biggest argument for working from home is that you’re guaranteed safety from hustle and bustle of a traditional company working environment. Unfortunately, startup entrepreneurs tend to overlook the people they live with as liabilities and interruptions. Friends and family are part of “life” in the “work-life” balance.

Creating the distinctive line between your work space and your home space (and the state of mind that goes along with each, respectively) is necessary for a work-life balance. Leaving for work to your shared office space means leaving friends, family, pets, etc. behind and interacting with tasks at hand. Returning home means leaving work behind and choosing to now interact with “life”.

Professionalism

Would you schedule a meeting in your own home? If a client needs to meet with you, or you’re pitching to a new client, is your living room the best place to do it? Let’s say your home office is a perfect meeting place; is the rest of your house necessary to walk through before getting there? There’s nothing professional about running a business completely out of our home.

Coworking and shared office spaces allow the opportunity to utilize fully furnished and serviced meeting rooms for interactions with clients. Your coworking space also offers a designated business address to put on your business card. Once coupled with a work email address and a dedicated business contact number, you can minimize how much your work spills over into your life.

In conclusion, a work-life balance can be difficult to attain, and I’m not suggesting that one needs to move their entire life somewhere new. Working from home has its benefits. However, utilizing a shared office space is extremely beneficial in growing your networks, separating work from life and maintaining a professional mindset when arriving at a place you call work.

Your work space is entirely dependent on you and your work style but make sure you’re looking into coworking spaces as an option for the future of your small business.